Government & Politics

How to Escape from a Concentration Camp

T’was the night before New Year’s, 2012…. and we were reminded of this story told long ago, in the pages of the LA Free Press in 1968. Hopefully, re-running it now is helpful.

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How to Escape from a Concentration Camp, LA Free Press Archives, 1968 (1 of 4)

How to Escape from a Concentration Camp, LA Free Press Archives, 1968 (2 of 4)

How to Escape from a Concentration Camp, LA Free Press Archives, 1968 (3 of 4)

How to Escape from a Concentration Camp, LA Free Press Archives, 1968 (4 of 4)

Yesterday, it was the Counter Culture.
Today, it’s… all about us.

Est. 1964 Re-Incarnated by Popular Demand

This is the original, 60’s, counter culture, LA Free Press. Today’s Best Alternative View & Our Old Hippie Headlines, Too! A Head Trip for Smart Minds.

Been There. Done That.

Now, A Chance to Get it Right.

December 30, 2011 – January 5, 2012

To be Published throughout the Week

With the signing of the National Defense Authorization Act, the OWS Movement may only be a stepping stone to ‘America’s Salvation’. While supporting its intent, we will now go further, bringing news and views that will not only encourage the changes the Occupy Movement seeks but those actions that will protect our Rights to make those changes.

On December 20, 1968 the LA Free Press Front Page pointed toward the inside article – How to Escape a Concentration Camp. A reprint of the article will appear here on January 3.

Yesterday, it was the Counter Culture.
Today, it’s… all about us.

Est. 1964 Re-Incarnated by Popular Demand

This is the original, 60’s, counter culture, LA Free Press. Today’s Best Alternative View & Our Old Hippie Headlines, Too! A Head Trip for Smart Minds.

Been There. Done That.

Now, A Chance to Get it Right.

December 24 – December 31, 2011

Published throughout the Week

The OWS Movement is not the ‘Arab Spring’, but it may be ‘America’s Salvation’.

The LA Free Press brings a unique perspective to a Movement that may change your life forever…

Has Obama found his way to the next term as President of these United States of America?

The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) should be on your mind. If it is not, as it is on the minds of millions of other Americans, then clearly you do not know of it or you do not, as they do, understand the danger it presents.

In brief, you and I might be easily labeled as a ‘terrorist’ or, with just as little proof, as one who – though maybe unknowingly – had given ’support’ to a terrorist organization, perhaps one that seemed to us a charitable cause. No matter. And no chance to have your day in a civil court where a presumption of innocence trumps one of guilt, where a jury is comprised of your peers, and – this is important – the trial is to begin in a ’speedy’ fashion. Instead, the U.S. Military will try you, and at their leisure. In other words, you could wait for years with little assurance that a judgment by our Constitution will ever come about.

(A link to how you may find yourself hauled away, and the chance of again seeing the light of day is provided below. You should be dismayed, or better yet, scared, as to how your Rights as an American Citizen are decimated by the NDAA.)

For the millions of those who do know what the NDAA portends, there is yet one item of which most seem uncertain: Has it, in fact, become ‘law’… did Obama sign it, or did he veto it?

In response to the many calls we have received on these questions – the answer is ‘No.’; President Obama has NOT signed the NDAA (SB #1867) into law, nor has he vetoed it. Another fact is that he has longer than the 10 days widely touted as his deadline. While he was presented with the bill on Friday, December 16th, and many were led to believe that today, the 26th, was its do or die date, Article 1, Section 7 of the U.S. Constitution states:

If any Bill shall not be returned by the President within ten days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the same shall be a Law, in like manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their Adjournment prevent its return, in which case it shall not be a Law.

Therefore, the Sunday that immediately followed Friday, December 16th, AND the following Sunday, the 25th, would be eliminated from the 10 day count. But, more important, is the third fact: Congress has put itself (officially) into a coma, declaring that the lights are on, even though no one is really there.

It is nothing more than an attempt to stick to the words of Robert’s Rules of Order while side-stepping his intent. Not new, but why now? So that an ‘official’ adjournment does not present President Obama with the opportunity to neither sign the NDAA nor affix a veto to it so that, per the Constitution, the bill ‘shall not be a Law.’

They understand the opportunity, it is not unique, it has been done several times before. Many of us know it as a ‘pocket veto’.

What many may not know – and find hard to believe – is that its exact precedent was set by (Republican) President George W. Bush in December 2007 when he pocket vetoed H.R. 1585, the “National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008″.

At that time, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was still the House Speaker. Emphatically and adamantly, she declared: “Congress vigorously rejects any claim that the president has the authority to pocket-veto this legislation, and will treat any bill returned to the Congress as open to an override vote.”

Her declaration was, very likely, more of frustration than of fact; certainly she was aware of the precise advantage that a ‘pocket’ veto gave the President. Simply put, if President Bush had chosen to veto the bill via the standard process, it could have been overridden in each house by a two-thirds majority vote – the bill would have become law.

HOWEVER, a pocket vetoed cannot be overridden. Instead, the bill must be reintroduced in each house of Congress, and then passed by both.

With a public outcry, as there surely has been in this case, from efforts to halt its passage via online petitions to have the President veto it to the outright retribution of recalling those who voted for it, few are likely to want to put their name on a similar but new bill. And with the warning of what can happen to those who voted for the last set of bills freshly evident, those sponsors should find vote gathering, tough going.

In the instance of President Bush’s pocket veto, H.R. 1585 was sent to him on December 19th, the same day the Congress adjourned. In its essence, the bill was re-introduced as H.R. 4986 on the very next after day Congress reconvened on January 15th, 2008. Incredibly, a Committee the very same day (January 16th) was able to modify the several phrases the President objected to and get it to the full house for a vote. AND it passed that very same day, too! Just as amazingly, the modified bill passed the Senate – less than a week later. Only six days after that, President Bush signed it into law. All told, it was a mere 5 weeks from rejection to (in his form) resurrection.

I’m willing to say, with the cross-purposes that abound in the present Congress, as small an interim of rejection to resurrection would be more than miraculous even if it were all powered up by the angry discovery that they were, in fact, adjourned, and the ‘veto’ was the natural consequence.

And wouldn’t all be for the better? A ‘signing statement’ has been mentioned – perhaps it will be Obama’s promise to us all that he will not enforce the terrible power the bill provides. But we will still know it is there. And won’t all of those legislators bear a cross for providing it in the first place, or have egg on their face as it is rejected?

The irony of it all – all year long they have come in, when they should have been gone. And now, they should have been gone and, instead, they come in! Either way, and tragically, we’re the ones hit by the swinging door. A door in a façade, that’s nothing more than a house of cards, where the deck seems to be, perpetually, stacked against us.

Maggies view on the snares of the NDAA: http://www.maggiesnotebook.com/2011/12/national-defense-authorization-act-rendition-detaining-americans-the-reality/

A video on the snares of the NDAA: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAL6ATLv77c

A petition to the President: https://secure.aclu.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=3897&s_subsrc=SEM_Google_search-indefinite-detention_NDAA_ndaa_p_9302625622

For recall information: http://www.ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/Laws_governing_recall#State.2C_local.2C_and_federal

Per this site, only eleven states provide rights of recall of their elected federal officials.

Montana, for instance, permits recalls on the grounds of physical or mental lack of fitness, incompetence, violation of oath of office, official misconduct, or conviction of certain felony offenses. Recall campaigns against Senators Max Baucus and Jonathan Tester, who voted for the NDAA, have been announced.

Federal courts have not ruled on the validity of such recalls.

Yesterday, it was the Counter Culture.
Today, it’s… all about us.

Est. 1964 Re-Incarnated by Popular Demand

This is the original, 60’s, counter culture, LA Free Press. Today’s Best Alternative View & Our Old Hippie Headlines, Too! A Head Trip for Smart Minds.

Been There. Done That.

Now, A Chance to Get it Right.

December 17 – December 23, 2011

Published throughout the Week

The OWS Movement is not the ‘Arab Spring’, but it may be ‘America’s Salvation’.

The LA Free Press brings a unique perspective to a Movement that may change your life forever…

Yesterday, it was the Counter Culture.
Today, it’s… all about us.

Est. 1964 Re-Incarnated by Popular Demand

This is the original, 60’s, counter culture, LA Free Press. Today’s Best Alternative View & Our Old Hippie Headlines, Too! A Head Trip for Smart Minds.

Been There. Done That.

Now, A Chance to Get it Right.